Summons to Berlin

May 22, 2023
Psychiatrist Intrator debuts with a passionate memoir about seeking restitution for her family’s financial losses under Nazi rule. In the 1930s, Intrator’s grandfather was a successful Berlin businessman, and her father was a promising law student. The city’s increasingly restrictive environment for Jews led to the forced auction of the family’s commercial building in East Berlin; it was turned into a factory that produced Nazi flags and the yellow stars Jewish citizens were made to wear. Nearly a century later, Intrator—whose family avoided Nazi camps by escaping to the United States—is tasked with proving that her family lost the building due to antisemitism in order to receive reparations for its seizure. As a psychiatrist, Intrator is attuned to the micro and macro traumas of the Holocaust and its legacy, regularly calling out the “stonewalling” and “gaslighting” tactics she confronts from the contemporary German government. She’s also sharply aware of the psychological toll her quest takes on her; when she meets with an unsympathetic German attorney, she admits, “it was degrading... knowing that people such as enjoy full access to the society from which my family had been ousted.” Though the specifics of German law can be confusing and dry, Intrator succeeds in the family-focused portions of her narrative. This is a unique and memorable account of untangling inherited trauma. Agent: Jennifer Utner, Utner Agency.

June 16, 2023

Psychiatrist Intrator, the daughter of two German Jewish refugees, details her efforts to gain financial restitution for a large Berlin building, located at 16 Wallstrasse, that had once produced textiles. The Nazis stole it from her family in the 1930s. Her father had sought restitution for the building, but he had not been well enough to carry out his plan. On his deathbed, he posed two unsettling questions to the author: "Are you tough enough yet?" "Do they know who you are?" The author soon realized that his questions related to the building in Berlin and sought to learn more. The author outlines her personal reckoning with postwar German bureaucracy through the 1990s. Layered with pain and mystery, this book describes how Intrator, who grew up in the United States, worked with multiple lawyers and eventually an international investigative firm, to uncover the shocking history of the building at 16 Wallstrasse and what it became during the Nazi era. VERDICT A powerful and personal story that will interest many readers of history. It offers a deep understanding of how the Holocaust affected numerous families.--Amy Lewontin

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